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He did call Afrikaner attorney Joshua Greeff a ‘piece of white shit… who should go back to Holland…’ and wrote a 64-page report about the ‘white racists in the judiciary’ -- But hey, that’s not being racist, is it?

Sunday, 20 September 2009 – SAPA reports -- JOHANNESBURG - The Western Cape’s judge-president Hlophe vehemently denied accusations that he was a ‘racist and doesn’t like white people’. He argued during his candidacy interview with the Judicial Service Commission for the Constitutional Court that he would ‘love’ to be part of it, describing it as ‘dynamic”on Sunday.

The Northern Cape Judge was supported by a small but highly vocal group outside from the Justice for Hlophe lobby group, sporting t-shirts with his picture printed on the fronts. However, Hlophe denied during his interview for the Bench-job however that he knew its leader, Percy Gumbi, seen left on this photograph taken by Lisa Skinner of the Mail & Guardian, while talking to the media with his comrade Jabu Khuluse. However – Gumbi was quoted as saying during this July 2009 presser that ‘Judge President Hlophe has actually signed theor nomination letter and he accepted the nomination as such”; and that the funds for theor campaign came from their members' own pockets; http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-07-17-hlophe-and-the-chamber-of-secrets

Up until last month Hlophe was caught up in a complaint and counter-complaint row, relating to allegations that he made ‘inappropriate approaches’ to two judges last year to try and influence a corruption case against pres. Jacob Zuma – a case which has now been abandoned. After the JSC decided that there was ‘no need for a full enquiry’ however, reports SAPA on Sunday, Hlophe's life changed from facing the disgrace of being removed as a judge, to being a candidate for chief justice as head of the Constitutional Court, the highest court in the land.

"We had a fight. It was never personal right from the beginning," he said on Sunday -- explaining that he was just ‘exercising the rights that every South African had when he complained about the judges making their complaint public before he could answer them:’

"In my mind Mr Burgess, I have put this behind me..." he said in response to a question by JSC representative Cecil Burgess, who was chosen from the ANC in Parliament and believed they would be able to work in a "collegial" way.

He rejected a suggestion by Burgess that "newspapers say you are racist* and you don't like white people". He cited two of his judgments to prove that he wasn’t - one where he ruled against a person who did not want his case heard by a white judge, and the other denying an appeal from the security guard who was found guilty of murdering South Africa’s former first lady Marike de Klerk in her seaside apartment.

Hlope said he “visited white people, they visited him, they gave lifts to each other's children and had each other's children over at their houses. "So, I am not a racist, I deny it."

Hlophe, who holds a doctorate from Cambridge university in the UK, and whose CV include lectureships and head of department at the University of Transkei, denied knowing Percy Gumbi, although this man was lobbying for him under the "Justice for Hlophe Alliance".

However when Hlophe was questioned about his financial dealings with the company Oasis**, problems arose when the outspoken Independent Democrats’ opposition party leader, MP Patricia De Lille asked Hhlophe ‘to describe the terms of his retainer with the company to help her understand the matter.

Some of the JSC-commissioners objected at once -- saying that they had ‘ already dealt with this matter.” They wanted to clear the press and public from the room at this point -- however, both De Lille and the Inkatha Freedom Party's MP Koos van der Merwe insisted that they had to stay, saying ‘it was important to be able to ask questions in public on this issue,” SAPA reported.

Advocate Isak Smuts had also wanted Hlophe to explain the apparent contradiction that his "fight" with the Constitutional Court Judges was ‘not personal.’ Smuts said that during the JSC preliminary enquiry Hlophe had made certain derogatory statements about the judges.

After ‘some debate’ the Supreme Court of Appeal Judge President Lex Mpati then decided that he had ‘wanted to avoid such arguments.”

What was left out of many news media reports however was the following: the room was then ordered cleared of the media and public – and while waiting downstairs to be called back in again, the media were then moved out of the building altogether: raised voices could be heard inside.

Only about 45 minutes later -- at 22:50pm, did this hearing resume and the public and the news media were allowed back inside, SAPA reported.

In 2005, Hlophe was reported to have called Cape Town attorney Joshua Greeff, a “piece of white shit who is not fit to walk in the corridors of the High Court”. He also suggested that Greeff should go back to Holland.Greeff is not Dutch. He made the comments in front of witnesses, however later denied making the remarks,

In 2004 Hlophe wrote a report to Chief Justice Pius Langa alleging racism at the Cape Bar. He also accused his deputy, Deputy Judge President Jeanette Traverso, of racism. Hlophe accused certain white judges and leading members of the Cape Bar of racism in a 43 page report submitted to the Minister of Justice in November 2004.

In 2005 Hlophe had allocated an Afrikaans language rights case to senior Cape High Court Judge Wilfred Thring “because I knew he would fuck up the trial and then it could be set right on appeal”. He repeated this in front of numerous witnesses, including senior advocate Norman Arendse SC, who wrote to Chief Justice Pius Langa about the incident. Denying he ever made the remark, Hlophe claimed there was a smear campaign against him.

On October 9, 2007, nine senior members of the Cape Bar Council wrote to the Cape Town- based Cape Times newspaper in support of former constitutional and appeals court judge Johann Kriegler's comment at the weekend that Hlophe was "unfit for the Bench".They were Schalk Burger (Senior Counsel, former acting judge, a top commercial lawyer and former chairman of Johannesburg Bar Council); Michael Fitzgerald (Senior Counsel and former acting judge); Jeremy Gauntlett (Senior Counsel, former chairman of General Council of the Bar and Cape Bar Council, and at various points advocate for government and senior ANC members); Peter Hodes (Senior Counsel and former leading figure in the Cape Bar Council); Rob Petersen (Senior Counsel, human rights lawyer and apartheid exile); Les Rose-Innes (Senior Counsel and former chairman of the Cape Bar Council); Nic Treurnicht (Senior Counsel, former chairman of the Cape Bar Council); Henri Viljoen (Senior Counsel, former acting judge and anti-apartheid lawyer in the famous "Wit Doeke" case) and Renata Williams (Senior Counsel and former acting judge).

** Oasis:In early 2006 it was reported that Hlophe had, without the necessary Ministerial consent, taken a remunerated position on the board of Oasis, an asset management company. It was subsequently reported that Hlophe had used his position to advance Oasis for, whilst on the Oasis payroll, ‘had considered a matter involving one of his colleagues’, JudgeSiraj Desai andd Hlophe had granted Oasis legal permission from an order from his Bench to sue Desaj.

September 21 2009 – JOHANNESBURG. ANC Youth League president Julius Malema is expected to be cross-examined in the Equality Court in Johannesburg on Monday on an anti-female hate speech charge.The Sonke Gender Justice Network laid the complaint against Malema for saying in public that President Jacob Zuma's rape accuser "had a nice time".

Last month, Magistrate Colleen Collis dismissed a complaint of unfair discrimination against Malema, but ruled that the charges of hate speech and harassment remain.

Malema has been adamant that he ‘will not apologise for his comment’- made at the Cape Peninsula Technikon in January in the run-up to general elections, saying it had been ‘taken out of context.”

His comment was: "Those who had a nice time will wait until the sun comes out, request breakfast and ask for taxi money. In the morning, that lady requested breakfast and taxi money." Malema was referring to a rape charge against Zuma, on which he was acquitted in 2006 before he became president.

The Sonke Gender Justice Network said the comment ‘perpetuated rape myths and could affect the lobbying and workshops they did among boys and men to prevent sexual violence’.

The term "genocide" was coined by legal scholar Raphael Lemkin in 1943, writing:

'Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actionsaiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.

The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity and lives of the members of such groups... '